The paper is a general account of Janet's conception of hysteria as a disease produced by dissociation. The author gives a short account of Freud's theory, with which he does not agree. He argues that the response to the physician as father or mother is not necessarily a sexual one, but is perhaps due to the child's greater 'primitive credulity' and suggestibility.

He gives two cases to show that treatment by hypnotism is much quicker than psycho-analysis in simple cases—in both cases the patient was cured by setting free the emotion connected with painful repressed incidents by abreaction in the hypnotic state. He does not state, however, how he would deal with cases that he cannot hypnotise or who do not respond to hypnotism.